Electronic devices may generate heat when continuously performing operations requiring a large amount of computation. The generated heat may increase the surface temperature of the electronic device, causing low-temperature burns, performance degradation, and/or damage of a corresponding element. A temperature sensor may be installed in the proximity of a part which is expected to emit heat to manage a state of components related to the temperature sensor. In addition, when the temperature sensor detects a temperature of a specific condition, the electronic device may directly shut down a system or may cause throttling. The throttling may be performed in a plurality of stages to protect a chipset or prevent inconveniencing the user. Therefore, the heating phenomenon may be mitigated to some extent by reducing central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU) frequency to a predetermined level during throttling.
A method for controlling heat in an electronic device may include shutting down a system or reducing a processing speed of a processor (frequency) to a predetermined level in a throttling section. The method of shutting down the system may force termination of an application being executed, or terminate operation of the electronic device itself. This method may be undesirable for the user of the electronic device. In addition, reducing the processing speed of the processor to the predetermined level in the throttling section may mitigate the heating phenomenon to some extent, but the performance may be degraded. For example, the method of controlling the clock frequency of the processor may cause performance degradation, such as frame drop, lagging, etc., in an application that may require an instant reaction (for example, a game, 3D contents).